A night of honors
Jordan Miles accepts the NAACP Spirit Award Friday at the 78th Annual NAACP State Conference at the Doubletree by Hilton at Meadow Lands.
Benjamin Todd Jealous
It was a night of celebration for the NAACP at its annual Freedom Fund Dinner, as members reveled in the organization’s accomplishments in 2012 – including its role in the suspension of Pennsylvania’s voter ID law and efforts to register a record number of voters throughout the country. Also receiving honors was Jordan Miles, a 20-year-old Homewood man who received national attention after he was arrested and beaten during an encounter with police in January 2010.
Members from across the state attended the 78th Annual NAACP State Conference hosted by the NAACP Washington branch and held at the Doubletree by Hilton hotel in Meadow Lands.
Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, served as keynote speaker and electrified the audience with his talk.
“These are tough times. This year, we have seen more states pass more laws seeking to push more voters out of the ballot box than we have seen in the past century. Here in Pennsylvania, you guys in dramatic fashion proved how ridiculous the premise for strict voter ID laws are,” Jealous said, calling the voter ID law a way of “trying to bamboozle people into believing that their neighbors in the world’s greatest democracy shouldn’t be allowed to vote.”
Jealous also referenced Frederick Douglass and talked about the vision of the NAACP and its role in ensuring equality and respect.
“The vision that has guided us…is this notion of a greater America, a manifest destiny based on human equality, people of all colors, shoulder to shoulder, living in unity treating each other with the respect that every human being deserves from their neighbor of every race,” said Jealous, who talked about the importance of fighting for the rights of other minorities, gays and lesbians. “When we are at our best, we are inclusive, and our desire is to be the greatest example of human unity that the world has ever seen.”
Miles was presented with the NAACP Spirit Award by Tim Stevens, chairman of the Plack Political Empowerment Project, and Jerome Mondesire, president of state conference.
The soft-spoken Miles, who was an honor student at Pittsburgh’s performing arts high school CAPA, where he played the viola, talked about the encounter and how it affected his life. Miles, who had no criminal record at the time of the incident, said he was walking from his home to his grandmother’s house when police jumped him. Police charged him with resisting arest and assaulting police. A federal court jury found the three police officers not guilty of maliciously prosecuting Miles. The lawsuit is ongoing as two other claims by Miles must be retried.
“You don’t know how much it means for me to receive an award like this. Our God is an awesome God. The pain that I went through that night, the pain I still go through, the suffering, the embarrassment I felt, the humiliation … I continue to fight because of people like you,” said Miles.
He said he wears a bracelet engraved with “Justice for Jordan” because it represents justice for the children of all of those in attendance at the banquet.
“There have been way too many Trayvon Martins. This is a fight that must be fought,” Miles said.